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MS Security Essentials reporting false positives in the Bitcoin blockchain

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Re: MS Security Essentials reporting false positives in the Bitcoin blockchain

#11

Post by afreak »

DerpDerpDerp wrote: post #9
afreak wrote: post #3

The simple solution is to not allow your anti-virus software to scan anything that cannot malware. There are exceptions to the rule of course such as MP3s that had executable code, but why does it need to scan every single file on your system? Full disclosure: I used to work for an AV software company and personally think that AV is a dead technology.

Could you elaborate on why you think it's a dead technology?

There are many articles describing why but really it comes down to this: malware authors can pump out so many copies of their software at once that signature-based detections in which the AV industry relies on are no longer reliable or effective.

We're at a point now where what may have worked as a defence against stuff being found on floppy drives just isn't able to scale for today's modern infrastructure.

AV is really a last-line of defence against being forgetful, and nothing more.

Re: MS Security Essentials reporting false positives in the Bitcoin blockchain

#12

Post by nivla »

kijin wrote: post #6

MSE was top-notch when it was first released. It aced all the malware detection benchmarks, not to mention it was completely ad-free and extremely lightweight, which was unheard of in the free antivirus market. The high detection rate and low performance impact made lots of Windows users flock to MSE, myself included. Nowadays, MSE is still lightweight, but it sits at the bottom of every malware detection benchmark.…

Nah I will stick with MSE because the alternative for me is not to use an antivirus. If you ever want to know how to bring a 8-core i7 to its knees, install Norton. MSE is the only antivirus that is lightweight, stays out of your way and the least annoying of everything out there and not to mention its free with no ads. Sure, it doesn't have an heuristic scanning but it did once do a good job of detecting a malware that both Avast and Norton missed, which is good enough trust for me. The best feature is that it doesn't have a girl screaming "Avast, Your database have been updated." or "Your license is about to expire in 90days unless you pay $$$" every 4 hours.

Don't download anything sketchy, keep an updated version of your browser, don't run yourself as root and your should be fine for 99.9% infections out there. For the rest just keep MSE around.

Re: MS Security Essentials reporting false positives in the Bitcoin blockchain

#13

Post by jacobwcarlson »

afreak wrote: post #3

The simple solution is to not allow your anti-virus software to scan anything that cannot malware. There are exceptions to the rule of course such as MP3s that had executable code, but why does it need to scan every single file on your system? Full disclosure: I used to work for an AV software company and personally think that AV is a dead technology.

Given your background it's surprising you don't realize how many file formats are Turing-complete and thus capable of mischief.

Re: MS Security Essentials reporting false positives in the Bitcoin blockchain

#14

Post by pmorici »

sliverstorm wrote: post #10
voltagex_ wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a comment on that issue: >Just for fun, there's about 8000 reachable nodes on the network at the time of writing. Assuming that a large portion of the network is unreachable (NAT, filtering, intermittent, just not listening), it's probably safe to assume there's probably at least 50,000 nodes with the complete blockchain. If we XOR just the chainstate, we cause 50000 * 430 MB of disk writes, 50000 * 430 * 2 MB r…

Just 8000 bitcoin nodes? So much for the People's Distributed Currency.

Those are probably 'full nodes' to participate in the network as a miner or casual user you don't need to run a full node.

Re: MS Security Essentials reporting false positives in the Bitcoin blockchain

#15

Post by [deleted] »

sliverstorm wrote: post #10
voltagex_ wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a comment on that issue: >Just for fun, there's about 8000 reachable nodes on the network at the time of writing. Assuming that a large portion of the network is unreachable (NAT, filtering, intermittent, just not listening), it's probably safe to assume there's probably at least 50,000 nodes with the complete blockchain. If we XOR just the chainstate, we cause 50000 * 430 MB of disk writes, 50000 * 430 * 2 MB r…

Just 8000 bitcoin nodes? So much for the People's Distributed Currency.

[deleted]

Re: MS Security Essentials reporting false positives in the Bitcoin blockchain

#16

Post by ghshephard »

nivla wrote: post #12
kijin wrote: post #6

MSE was top-notch when it was first released. It aced all the malware detection benchmarks, not to mention it was completely ad-free and extremely lightweight, which was unheard of in the free antivirus market. The high detection rate and low performance impact made lots of Windows users flock to MSE, myself included. Nowadays, MSE is still lightweight, but it sits at the bottom of every malware detection benchmark.…

Nah I will stick with MSE because the alternative for me is not to use an antivirus. If you ever want to know how to bring a 8-core i7 to its knees, install Norton. MSE is the only antivirus that is lightweight, stays out of your way and the least annoying of everything out there and not to mention its free with no ads. Sure, it doesn't have an heuristic scanning but it did once do a good job of detecting a malware t…

You forgot the top two other pieces of advice - Make sure you have a decent adaptive firewall, and run anything even slightly worrisome in a virtual machine, never on your main operating system.

Re: MS Security Essentials reporting false positives in the Bitcoin blockchain

#17

Post by nivla »

OR they could have just used the string from EICAR test file [1].

Since I don't use bitcoin, let me ask, does everyone have to download the whole blockchain to their computer in order to mine or receive/sent the coins? Wouldn't the blockchain be in XX GB size by now?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file

Re: MS Security Essentials reporting false positives in the Bitcoin blockchain

#18

Post by spain »

kijin wrote: post #6

MSE was top-notch when it was first released. It aced all the malware detection benchmarks, not to mention it was completely ad-free and extremely lightweight, which was unheard of in the free antivirus market. The high detection rate and low performance impact made lots of Windows users flock to MSE, myself included. Nowadays, MSE is still lightweight, but it sits at the bottom of every malware detection benchmark.…

It's sad. However instead of ditching it entirely I have moved to a combination of MSE for real-time protection and Malwarebytes as backup, which I run every month or so to get anything that might manage to slip through.

Re: MS Security Essentials reporting false positives in the Bitcoin blockchain

#19

Post by bowmessage »

nivla wrote: post #17

OR they could have just used the string from EICAR test file [1]. Since I don't use bitcoin, let me ask, does everyone have to download the whole blockchain to their computer in order to mine or receive/sent the coins? Wouldn't the blockchain be in XX GB size by now? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file

Yes, they do. And yes its quite large! Over 10 GB.

Re: MS Security Essentials reporting false positives in the Bitcoin blockchain

#20

Post by Jach »

bowmessage wrote: post #19
nivla wrote: post #17

OR they could have just used the string from EICAR test file [1]. Since I don't use bitcoin, let me ask, does everyone have to download the whole blockchain to their computer in order to mine or receive/sent the coins? Wouldn't the blockchain be in XX GB size by now? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file

Yes, they do. And yes its quite large! Over 10 GB.

No they don't. Mining software that connects to pools is independent of having a blockchain copy. There are also several bitcoin wallet implementations that don't require a full copy of the blockchain.
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